Effect of structurally-induced lateral confinement on split Hopkinson pressure bar test specimens of concrete-like materials

Abstract

In dynamic testing of concrete-like materials, there is a need in distinguishing structural effects from genuine strain-rate effects. In this paper, this generic problem is studied by numerical simulations based on a phenomenological material model available in the commercial finite element (FE) code Abaqus. The numerical results show that the increase of the dynamic increase factor (DIF) with the increase of strain-rate in concrete-like materials in a Split Hopkinson Pressure Bar (SHPB) test is a phenomenon related not only to material strain-rate effects but also to structural effects. It was found that dilation, surface friction and lateral inertia cause lateral confinement, which enhances DIF when the strain-rate is greater than a transition strain-rate in the order of 102 s−1. Although, genuine strain-rate effect may exist as suggested by meso-scale simulations in previous investigations, the findings in this study show that structural effects have a significant contribution to the increase of DIF, and therefore, it is necessary to correctly calibrate existing phenomenological models and interpret the results obtained from split Hopkinson pressure bar (SHPB) tests.